.On the Front Lines of the News Control War
An information war is breaking out on multiple fronts, with journalists caught in the crossfire.
Federal investigators are looking into several national security leaks to the press. Government agencies are trying to muzzle staffers who don’t toe the official line. Cartoonists are the latest to find their work denounced, with violent results in the Middle East.
And it doesn’t stop there. Politicians are even trying to creatively edit what’s said about them online.
All these pressure tactics are being employed in the name of influencing public opinion, which increasingly means manipulating information and controlling how — and whether — it is made public. Journalists, who are genetically disposed toward greater openness, are having a harder time fighting these battles because of declining public faith in their profession.
A small example: The Pentagon, which had been providing its annual budget two or three days in advance with an embargo on the news, refused to release the documents last Monday until Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s 2 p.m. press briefing, making it impossible for reporters to ask him detailed questions.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman says the practice was changed because of past violations of embargoes, and he defended the withholding of the budget (except for a news release) until Rumsfeld spoke. Otherwise, he says, “someone hits the ’send’ key at the commencement of the briefing without any opportunity for the secretary to be able to talk about the budget and the bigger picture.”
A larger example: James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist, told the New York Times last month that agency officials tried to “censor” him by insisting on reviewing his lectures, papers and interviews, after he called for a reduction in greenhouse gases tied to global warming.
The most controversial area by far involves national security. To journalists, the Times story disclosing the domestic surveillance program, and the Washington Post report revealing the secret CIA prisons in Europe, are matters of both civil liberties and how taxpayers’ dollars are being spent. To detractors, the newspapers are indifferent to whether their scoops undermine the war on terror. (The situation was reversed in the Valerie Plame leak, where some government officials wanted to out a CIA operative and many journalists believe Robert Novak should not have acted as a conduit for their effort.)
The most extreme forms of media orchestration involve cold cash: The Pentagon paying Iraqi newspapers to run pro-U.S. stories. The Education Department paying commentator Armstrong Williams, who backed the president’s program. Former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy paying a free-lancer to submit articles to a Birmingham newspaper that defended him during his fraud trial.
But there are many areas drenched in gray: Should a dissident bureaucrat or independent-minded scientist be able to speak freely to reporters, or should political appointees be able to choke off such communication in the name of message discipline? Rank-and-file journalists strongly favor the former, but guess what: Some news organizations don’t allow their reporters to give interviews without permission, if at all.
Political cartoonists seem to be the new whipping boys, but The Post’s Tom Toles is relatively lucky: When the Joint Chiefs of Staff objected to his cartoon depicting a quadruple-amputee soldier as a symbol of a war gone awry, all they did was send a letter denouncing it as tasteless. (No such letter went to Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who pictured a camera crew ignoring a group of wounded soldiers, including an amputee, in search of ABC’s Bob Woodruff. Perhaps that message was deemed acceptable.)
But the riots that greeted the publication of cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad — first by a Danish newspaper, then in solidarity by numerous European ones — have prompted some soul-searching. Since the whole thing was devised as a free-speech exercise, the question is whether it was worth it to gratuitously offend followers of one religion. The fact that you can publish something doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a wise idea. At the same time, the violent protesters — who attacked the embassies of governments that have no control over newspapers — don’t have the slightest interest in freedom of speech.
Perhaps the most surreal practitioners of information control are politicians channeling phony memoirist James Frey. The campaign of New York gubernatorial candidate William Weld altered two newspaper articles posted on its Web site to remove all negative references, the Times reported. And on the Wikipedia Web site — a database maintained by volunteers — an aide to Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., removed an old promise that he would serve no more than four terms, while some Republicans deleted references to indicted Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas.
With everyone scrambling for every conceivable advantage, it’s important that journalists remain honest brokers of information. But in a world where they are being shot at, prosecuted, sued and stonewalled, that’s increasingly hard to do.
---
ABC’s “World News Tonight” launched a series last week on the wounded of the Iraq war — a subject close to anchor Elizabeth Vargas’s heart.
Not only were her colleagues Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt seriously injured by a roadside bomb on Jan. 29, but “I am an Army brat,” she says. “I grew up around bases with a dad who fought in a war. I know what it’s like to cope with that.”
Vargas says ABC has extensively covered the problems of veterans, but that “we were also reminded with what happened to Bob and Doug” that there is a growing group of people at home bearing the physical scars of the Iraq conflict, which has left 17,000 Americans wounded. “These are men and women who dedicate their lives to defending this country. They often have a difficult time emotionally, psychologically, physically and financially.”
Vogt was transferred to an outpatient facility at Bethesda Naval Hospital last week, but Woodruff remains under medical sedation.
Asked about criticism that the injuries of two journalists are receiving far more media attention than those of so many soldiers, Vargas says she has tried to emphasize the others in the past two weeks. “Obviously Bob is well known,” she says. “I think that’s something you can turn to your advantage by re-shining the light on the people they were covering” in the military.
The first piece in the “Homefront” series, by Dean Reynolds, looked at two disabled veterans first interviewed by the network two years ago. An Iowa man who lost both legs has become a spokesman for veterans, while a Pennsylvania man who lost a leg and his eyesight was buoyed by a group called Homes for Our Troops, which is building him a house free of charge.
“It’s about their triumphs, too,” Vargas says. “This isn’t just a downer.”
---
In a Washington Times profile of Sen. Barack Obama Friday, reporter Eric Pfeiffer described the portraits in the Illinois Democrat’s personal office.
Pfeiffer also quoted Mississippi Republican Sen. Trent Lott as saying Obama “needs to be a little more of a leader in the center if he really wants to have an impact,” and Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos blog, as saying Obama “has not been the kind of strong leader people expected.”
The problem is, Pfeiffer never interviewed Lott or Moulitsas — who has accused him of “outright plagiarism” — or visited Obama’s office. The material was lifted from a Chicago Sun-Times piece last month.
“I definitely made a mistake in not including the attribution,” says Pfeiffer, a former National Review Online writer who has been with the Times for just over a week. He says he believes he “intended” to credit the Sun-Times “and I didn’t. I guess it’s a fairly weak excuse, but it’s an honest one.”
Times Managing Editor Francis Coombs says Pfeiffer “acknowledged a stupid mistake. Needless to say, that’s correct.” The paper ran a correction Saturday, and Coombs said the editors will review Pfeiffer’s other stories before deciding what action to take.
CantonRep
Federal investigators are looking into several national security leaks to the press. Government agencies are trying to muzzle staffers who don’t toe the official line. Cartoonists are the latest to find their work denounced, with violent results in the Middle East.
And it doesn’t stop there. Politicians are even trying to creatively edit what’s said about them online.
All these pressure tactics are being employed in the name of influencing public opinion, which increasingly means manipulating information and controlling how — and whether — it is made public. Journalists, who are genetically disposed toward greater openness, are having a harder time fighting these battles because of declining public faith in their profession.
A small example: The Pentagon, which had been providing its annual budget two or three days in advance with an embargo on the news, refused to release the documents last Monday until Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s 2 p.m. press briefing, making it impossible for reporters to ask him detailed questions.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman says the practice was changed because of past violations of embargoes, and he defended the withholding of the budget (except for a news release) until Rumsfeld spoke. Otherwise, he says, “someone hits the ’send’ key at the commencement of the briefing without any opportunity for the secretary to be able to talk about the budget and the bigger picture.”
A larger example: James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist, told the New York Times last month that agency officials tried to “censor” him by insisting on reviewing his lectures, papers and interviews, after he called for a reduction in greenhouse gases tied to global warming.
The most controversial area by far involves national security. To journalists, the Times story disclosing the domestic surveillance program, and the Washington Post report revealing the secret CIA prisons in Europe, are matters of both civil liberties and how taxpayers’ dollars are being spent. To detractors, the newspapers are indifferent to whether their scoops undermine the war on terror. (The situation was reversed in the Valerie Plame leak, where some government officials wanted to out a CIA operative and many journalists believe Robert Novak should not have acted as a conduit for their effort.)
The most extreme forms of media orchestration involve cold cash: The Pentagon paying Iraqi newspapers to run pro-U.S. stories. The Education Department paying commentator Armstrong Williams, who backed the president’s program. Former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy paying a free-lancer to submit articles to a Birmingham newspaper that defended him during his fraud trial.
But there are many areas drenched in gray: Should a dissident bureaucrat or independent-minded scientist be able to speak freely to reporters, or should political appointees be able to choke off such communication in the name of message discipline? Rank-and-file journalists strongly favor the former, but guess what: Some news organizations don’t allow their reporters to give interviews without permission, if at all.
Political cartoonists seem to be the new whipping boys, but The Post’s Tom Toles is relatively lucky: When the Joint Chiefs of Staff objected to his cartoon depicting a quadruple-amputee soldier as a symbol of a war gone awry, all they did was send a letter denouncing it as tasteless. (No such letter went to Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who pictured a camera crew ignoring a group of wounded soldiers, including an amputee, in search of ABC’s Bob Woodruff. Perhaps that message was deemed acceptable.)
But the riots that greeted the publication of cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad — first by a Danish newspaper, then in solidarity by numerous European ones — have prompted some soul-searching. Since the whole thing was devised as a free-speech exercise, the question is whether it was worth it to gratuitously offend followers of one religion. The fact that you can publish something doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a wise idea. At the same time, the violent protesters — who attacked the embassies of governments that have no control over newspapers — don’t have the slightest interest in freedom of speech.
Perhaps the most surreal practitioners of information control are politicians channeling phony memoirist James Frey. The campaign of New York gubernatorial candidate William Weld altered two newspaper articles posted on its Web site to remove all negative references, the Times reported. And on the Wikipedia Web site — a database maintained by volunteers — an aide to Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., removed an old promise that he would serve no more than four terms, while some Republicans deleted references to indicted Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas.
With everyone scrambling for every conceivable advantage, it’s important that journalists remain honest brokers of information. But in a world where they are being shot at, prosecuted, sued and stonewalled, that’s increasingly hard to do.
---
ABC’s “World News Tonight” launched a series last week on the wounded of the Iraq war — a subject close to anchor Elizabeth Vargas’s heart.
Not only were her colleagues Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt seriously injured by a roadside bomb on Jan. 29, but “I am an Army brat,” she says. “I grew up around bases with a dad who fought in a war. I know what it’s like to cope with that.”
Vargas says ABC has extensively covered the problems of veterans, but that “we were also reminded with what happened to Bob and Doug” that there is a growing group of people at home bearing the physical scars of the Iraq conflict, which has left 17,000 Americans wounded. “These are men and women who dedicate their lives to defending this country. They often have a difficult time emotionally, psychologically, physically and financially.”
Vogt was transferred to an outpatient facility at Bethesda Naval Hospital last week, but Woodruff remains under medical sedation.
Asked about criticism that the injuries of two journalists are receiving far more media attention than those of so many soldiers, Vargas says she has tried to emphasize the others in the past two weeks. “Obviously Bob is well known,” she says. “I think that’s something you can turn to your advantage by re-shining the light on the people they were covering” in the military.
The first piece in the “Homefront” series, by Dean Reynolds, looked at two disabled veterans first interviewed by the network two years ago. An Iowa man who lost both legs has become a spokesman for veterans, while a Pennsylvania man who lost a leg and his eyesight was buoyed by a group called Homes for Our Troops, which is building him a house free of charge.
“It’s about their triumphs, too,” Vargas says. “This isn’t just a downer.”
---
In a Washington Times profile of Sen. Barack Obama Friday, reporter Eric Pfeiffer described the portraits in the Illinois Democrat’s personal office.
Pfeiffer also quoted Mississippi Republican Sen. Trent Lott as saying Obama “needs to be a little more of a leader in the center if he really wants to have an impact,” and Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos blog, as saying Obama “has not been the kind of strong leader people expected.”
The problem is, Pfeiffer never interviewed Lott or Moulitsas — who has accused him of “outright plagiarism” — or visited Obama’s office. The material was lifted from a Chicago Sun-Times piece last month.
“I definitely made a mistake in not including the attribution,” says Pfeiffer, a former National Review Online writer who has been with the Times for just over a week. He says he believes he “intended” to credit the Sun-Times “and I didn’t. I guess it’s a fairly weak excuse, but it’s an honest one.”
Times Managing Editor Francis Coombs says Pfeiffer “acknowledged a stupid mistake. Needless to say, that’s correct.” The paper ran a correction Saturday, and Coombs said the editors will review Pfeiffer’s other stories before deciding what action to take.
CantonRep
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